I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons (Peter S. Beagle)

I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons
Peter S. Beagle
Saga Press
Fiction, YA? Fantasy/Humor
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: There is no greater act of heroism than the slaying of a dragon... granted the dragon is one of the great beasts of legend, big enough to devour a horse or man, and the hero is of noble birth. Those who exterminate the smaller pest species, the ones that infest walls and crawl spaces, are considered little better than vermin control - and Robert, recent inheritor of his father's trade, is tired to his bones of it. He hates having to kill dragons, hates seeing them butchered in the dragon markets; he even keeps a few as pets, rescued from traps when he can manage it, and knows full well how intelligent they really are. But, as the main breadwinner of the household now that his father is dead, he can't exactly run away to pursue a more prestigious trade. And it's not like he'll ever have to take on any of the great, legendary species, the ones that haven't been seen in generations and whose slaying would make him an instant celebrity, not in a little kingdom like Bellemontagne. He may be unfortunately talented at extermination, but he's no hero.
Princess Cerise, like all princesses, knows she'll have to marry a prince at some point... but, despite the seemingly-endless stream of candidates riding to the castle, has yet to find any remotely interesting enough to consider. She has other dreams, such as teaching herself to read, and can't be bothered with the dull-witted braggarts strutting around court. Then she meets a handsome stranger, and for the first time finds herself smitten. Only Prince Reginald seems reluctant to actually propose. He left his home in order to prove himself to his father and kingdom through adventure and an act of heroism, and despite his wanderings has yet to so much as rescue a kitten. Before he'll ask for Cerise's hand, he is determined to find and slay a great dragon - a feat that will require a little help from his ever-patient valet Mortmain and the kingdom's best, and most reluctant, exterminator and dragon expert, Robert.

REVIEW: Like many fantasy readers, I read and enjoyed Beagle's classic The Last Unicorn. I also adore dragons. So, crossing Beagle's storytelling and prose with dragons... this should've been a no-brainer of a favorite tale. Unfortunately, while there are several decent elements at play here, I just was not feeling the magic in this story of reluctant dragon slayers and unexpected destinies.
After a prologue that foreshadows a darker danger on the horizon, it opens with solid promise as the reader meets Robert (or Gaius Aurelius Constantine Heliogabalus Thrax, his full given name) at home, a dragon exterminator who keeps little dragons as pets in a house full of children and a widowed mother. It's clear he hates his job (even though it's also clear early on that there's a reason that he's needed; unlike rats, a dragon can spit fire and even deliver a venomous bite, so they're hardly a benign presence), and just as clear that he sees no viable way out of following in his late father's footsteps, for all that he seems to feel an empathy for his victims that his father never did. The reader also meets Prince Reginald and Mortmain, the latter increasingly despairing over how the former has yet to fulfill the traditional royal quest of earning heroism and prestige away from home. Reginald, for his part, doesn't even really want to be a hero (or get married, even), and knows that he could slay a thousand dragons without earning the respect, let alone love, of his cruel warlord father. Princess Cerise has taken to treating the selection of a suitor as a job interview of sorts, giving each day's batch a number and an interview (which more often than not sends the would-be fiances packing, though some determined hangers-on linger in the hopes of changing her mind). She would much rather be out in the woods teaching herself to read (though the lower class girls like Robert's sisters are expected to study while the boys are expected to labor or apprentice, apparently royal women are to be kept illiterate, not the only head-scratching bit of contradictory worldbuilding in the tale) than dealing with most of them... especially when her parents can't help but stick their noses into her selection process. Eventually, after some excessive meandering, the characters end up together on the quest to find and slay a large mountain dragon, a journey undertaken reluctantly by Robert, not just because he'd rather not kill dragons if he can help it (and traveling to a wild dragon's domain specifically to kill it, for no other reason than ego, falls well outside that line), but because Cerise's blinding crush on Reginald evokes a kernel of jealousy, for all that he knows full well that lowly exterminators have as much chance of marrying a princess as the vermin-ranked dragons he exterminates. By this point I was, frankly, finding the characters mildly irritating and obtuse, all in their own ways, and was just waiting for the story to really take off - which it does, rather explosively, when what was supposed to be a (relatively) choreographed and routine hunt goes terribly awry. Even after that, though, there's a tendency for things to derail and wander, visiting too many side characters on too many side tangents, not all of which ultimately justify the "screen time" they take from the core trio. (There are also some odd vibes around women that tends to reduce their roles and minimize their efforts, where even Cerise's attempts to help the guys comes across as more a complication or irritation than an asset, and another side character's chief contribution to a relationship was bickering. Why bother including women at all, if that's all they are to a writer, stubborn little girls who need to love a man in order to begin to grow up, and even then are better off sitting to the side of the action?) Even the dragons, while initially interesting, start feeling oddly plot-convenient in the threat level they ultimately present and what they can or cannot (or will or will not) do. The big climax takes far, far too long to unfold and involves some serious handwaving on plausibility, even fantasy-world-with-dragons-and-wizards plausibility. By the end, I was thinking that Robert and his world's many dragon species ultimately felt a little too much like a muddled reworking of Hiccup and the dragons of Berk from the animated How to Train Your Dragon trilogy.
I liked some parts of this book; some of the descriptions were effective, and Robert's early conflicts over admiring and empathizing with the creatures he is obligated to exterminate, that nobody else sees as anything but scaly rats, has a lot of promise. But somehow I lost track of that promise and that spark as the story went on, a feeling that wasn't helped by the audiobook narration.

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